got the order wrong, Mama.”
“Oh Hammie, I told you to go earlier in the week so this wouldn’t happen.”
“I know, Mama, I know. I gotta go.”
He put the glass down in the sink and headed out the front door. He got into the Studebaker and turned the switch, but the car didn’t turn over. “Crap,” Ham said. He turned the ignition key again. No sound. Either the starter or the battery, but either way it was too late to do anything about it. He looked over at Mr. Ed, took a deep breath, got of the Studebaker, and walked over to the hearse.
He could hear his mother yell through the screen door. “Hammie, where did that hearse come from?”
He pulled out of the driveway and turned Mr. Ed in the direction of Nora’s house.
Just as Ham feared, Nora took one look at the hearse and declared, “Ham, I’m not ridin’ in that thing!”
“Nora, I know. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have trusted Uncle Carl. But the Studebaker won’t start, and we don’t have anythin’ else to drive, except the farm truck, and it’s filthy.”
“Well, I’d rather go to Winter Waltz in a filthy truck than in a hearse!”
“Oh come on, Nora, it’ll be unique.” Ham knew he was sounding like Uncle Carl. He began singing, “A hearse is a hearse of course, of course . . . ”
“Shut up, Ham MacPherson!” With that Nora got in the passenger side of Mr. Ed and slammed the door shut. She folded her arms across her chest and looked straight ahead.
“And why are you in a hot pink suit?”
“They got my order wrong.”
“You should have gone earlier in the week!”
“I know. That’s what Mama and Miss Joanna said,” Ham said. “You look real pretty, though, Nora.”
Stone silence.
“Tonight’ll be fun, Nora, I promise.”
“Shut up and drive, Ham!” So down the road they went: Ham in a pink tux and both of them in a hearse. The slight smile of amusement that crossed Nora’s face did not go unnoticed by Ham. It was a look Ham had seen before.
The dinner and Winter Waltz were uneventful. In the last slow dance of the night, Ham whispered in Nora’s ear. “Notice anythin’ different ‘bout this year from last?”
“You mean besides the fact you’re in a pink tux and we came here in a hearse?”
“Well, yeah, besides that. There warn’t no cats with firecrackers tied to their tails runnin’ through the gym.”
Nora giggled. “Well, that’s true.” In fact, it was true. But the real fireworks this year came after the dancing was over. By then, Nora had relaxed; she loved to dance, and Ham had been extra thoughtful, always making sure she had a refill of her coke and dancing every dance, even the fast ones (which he usually balked at). But tonight that was part of his penance.
Around midnight, they got into the hearse, and Ham drove to their “make-out” spot, a pullover spot near the top of the Brushy mountains that overlooked the Yadkin River Valley and the lights from Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro. It was one of a dozen such “lover’s lanes” tucked into the back roads of the Brushies.
Ham looked at Nora in the passenger seat. Small, petite, thick blond hair, with piercing green eyes and a killer smile. They had gone steady for three years. Ham and Nora had never done “it,” though by Ham’s reckoning, they were standing squarely on third base. He wondered who came up with the baseball analogy for making out, but it was well known in Wilkes County:
first base = kissing
second base = light petting on the outside of the clothes
third base = “heavy petting” underneath garments
home run = going all the way, doing “it”
Football really didn’t have any kind of equivalence. Basketball either. No wonder baseball was America’s favorite pastime!
The hearse had an after-market eight-track tape player and a bucket of Soul and R & B cartridges on the floorboard of the passenger side, presumably from the previous owner. Ham pulled out a tape.
“How ‘bout the Staple Singers?” Ham asked.
“I never heard of them,” Nora replied.
Four versions of “Let’s Do It Again” played while Ham and Nora made out. He shut down the engine; the tape deck continued to run on auxiliary.
The front of the hearse was not very conducive to heavy petting.
“This thing was made for the dead not the livin’!” Ham declared as he hit his shin on the tape deck. Somehow Ham had managed to get his hand down Nora’s spaghetti-strapped dress and was fumbling with her bra strap, feeling around for the clasp.
“It’s in the front, Ham,” Nora gasped.
“What’s in the front?” Ham heaved.
“The clasp!”
“What the heck is it doin’ up there?”
“It’s a strapless bra with the clasp in front.”
“Well, that’s confusing,” Ham grunted, as he freed the clasp and simultaneously hit his funny bone on the steering wheel and his head on the overhead interior light. Curtis Mayfield was crooniing through the speakers,
If you will count up to ten That’ll give me a chance to get my breath back Then . . . we’ll do it again an’ again!
They looked at each other and then both looked at the tinted sliding glass window separating them from the back of the hearse. Ham opened the sliding glass, wondering why a hearse driver would ever need to communicate with the back of the hearse.
“Wanna go back there? There’s more room.” Ham asked tentatively.
“The back of the hearse?”
“Sure why not?”
They hopped out of either side of Mr. Ed and met in the back of the hearse. Ham threw open the back door. They both stared inside, then turned toward each other and began laughing. There was a mattress with a fitted sheet in the back of the hearse. A thick, neatly folded blanket sat in the middle of the mattress. Ham recognized it as one Uncle Carl had purchased on the Cherokee reservation years ago.
“Did you put this in here, Thomas Hamilton MacPherson? Pretty presumptuous of you!” Nora demanded, trying to feign an indignant tone.
“No, I promise I didn’t,” Ham said. “It must have been Uncle Carl.”
“What did your Uncle Carl think we were goin’ to do?”
“I’m sure it warn’t for us, Nora. You know, Uncle Carl’ll sleep off a drunk spell in his car. He probably put this back here for him next time that happens.” Ham tried to sound convincing, but he certainly wasn’t sure what Uncle Carl was thinking. He did remember his wink and his words, “Nora’s gonna love it.”
“Aren’t you just dying to try it out, Nora?”
Nora giggled and took Ham by the hand and led him onto on the mattress. They shut the door to the hearse. There wasn’t much vertical room, Ham thought. Nobody was expected to sit up in the back of a hearse. But he decided there was plenty of horizontal room, and the mattress was soft. He covered them with the blanket. The Staple Singers continued to sing. By the time they got to the seventh song on the tape, Ham and Nora had reached “home.” Ham had hit his head on the hearse’s ceiling more than once, but now they were lying close together, arms and legs entangled listening to the melodic instrumentals of “After Sex.”
“I love you, Nora.”
“I love you,